News Ticker: My Morning Jacket, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "Idol Gives Back"

My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst and Bon Iver will contribute on the 12-track tribute disc Broken Hearts And Dirty Windows: Songs Of John Prine. According to Consequence of Sound, the LP also features the Avett Brothers and Deer Tick.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor are ending their hiatus. In an online press release, the band reports they'll be rocking "9 American towns" and curating the U.K. installment of All Tomorrow's Parties: "We are, as always, stoked, stubborn and petrified."

Next week's American Idol charity fundraiser Idol Gives Back will feature a taped appearance by President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, according to Fox News' White House blog.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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